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Phone Snobbery?

Windroid said:
Were they pro-iPhone snobs, or anti-iPhone snobs?
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At the time in early 2010s they were very much for Apple iPhone. But the ones I'm still in contact with, and from their Wechat and QQ messaging profiles, they now all have Huawei phones. The CCP has very much banned Apple marketing.
 
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I used to get a lot of confused folks who refused to admit their iPhones were made in China because the packaging always said 'designed by Apple in California'. They mistook it as 'made in California'

the others were often refugees who were Apple fans since the Apple //e, and still assumed the iPhones were built at Apple headquarters.
 
nickdalzell said:
I used to get a lot of confused folks who refused to admit their iPhones were made in China because the packaging always said 'designed by Apple in California'. They mistook it as 'made in California'

the others were often refugees who were Apple fans since the Apple //e, and still assumed the iPhones were built at Apple headquarters.
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iPhones maybe made in India now.
www.cnn.com

Is the iPhone's 'Made in India' era about to begin?

As Apple looks beyond China to secure crucial supply chains strained by Covid lockdowns and threatened by rising geopolitical tension, India has emerged as an attractive potential alternative to the world's second largest economy.
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com
I bought a Yamaha keyboard a few months ago, and was a bit suproised to see that was made in India, rather than China.

I don't think were going to see things like Apple "Made in USA", or Yamaha "Made in Japan" any time soon though, i.e. companies making products in their home countries, rather than outsourced to cheap labour.
 
I've noticed a lot of our parts are being made in countries such as Turkey, Vietnam, and Malaysia. It's like ever since COVID or the 'Foxxcon suicide nets' people are starting to avoid sourcing from China, or maybe they're finally coming to terms with the fact that all the stuff from China since the 90s is just pieces of crap that's meant to be landfill.

Now if only Lester and other charger companies would follow suit and stop making those ridiculous non-repairable 'smart chargers' and go back to tried and true ferro-resonant design again. Sometimes older is just better and can't be improved upon without caveats, such as the dozens of EVs that come in during Spring that have all dead batteries because the 'smart' charger can't detect enough voltage after winter storage and won't even turn on. The old '70s FR chargers never had that issue--they just worked without complaint.

Sorry MikeDT, nothing personal about your country I just hate whenever I see in bold letters 'MADE IN CHINA' and find out it isn't working and can't be repaired. I despise disposability and throw-away tech, and I'm of the time when quality usually meant Made In USA. Complete with schematic inside the cover.

And whoever came up with USB-C, I hope you die in a fire.
 
nickdalzell said:
I've noticed a lot of our parts are being made in countries such as Turkey, Vietnam, and Malaysia. It's like ever since COVID or the 'Foxxcon suicide nets' people are starting to avoid sourcing from China, or maybe they're finally coming to terms with the fact that all the stuff from China since the 90s is just pieces of crap that's meant to be landfill.

Now if only Lester and other charger companies would follow suit and stop making those ridiculous non-repairable 'smart chargers' and go back to tried and true ferro-resonant design again. Sometimes older is just better and can't be improved upon without caveats, such as the dozens of EVs that come in during Spring that have all dead batteries because the 'smart' charger can't detect enough voltage after winter storage and won't even turn on. The old '70s FR chargers never had that issue--they just worked without complaint.

Sorry MikeDT, nothing personal about your country I just hate whenever I see in bold letters 'MADE IN CHINA' and find out it isn't working and can't be repaired. I despise disposability and throw-away tech, and I'm of the time when quality usually meant Made In USA. Complete with schematic inside the cover.

And whoever came up with USB-C, I hope you die in a fire.
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Don't worry about it, China isn't my country, I only work here. I still sing Rule Britannia, God Save The King, and salute the Union Jack. :thumbsupdroid:

I've been here for 15 years now, and seen so many changes, I think the main thing is wages have been steadily rising in China, and is more economic for companies like Apple and Yamaha to move other countries where wages can be lower, like India. Samsung stopped all manufacturing in China, and moved to Vietnam, etc. a few years ago.

The last few items of clothing I've bought in the UK weren't made in China, they came from Bangladesh and Nicaragua, I believe Nike makes most of their overpriced sneakers using child labour in India and Bangledesh, rather than China.

I also think that most Americans and Brits are unwilling to slave away in a massive factory for 12-14 hours a day, 6 days a week, at minimum wages, doing an endlessly repetitive job on a production line, assembling smart-phones, or sewing garments, or whatever.
 
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Well, being the dumb 'Murican' I am, I have no clue what any of those references even mean, but I'm guessing other countries' pledges of allegiance? National Anthems?
 
Saluting the flag is the same, the big difference being that in the States you see them everywhere whereas anyone flying a national flag on their house in the UK would be regarded as a weirdo at best (this is not a joke).

One of those songs is a national anthem, the other a bit of 19th Century jingoism. The UK national anthem is a dreadful dirge with 3 verses, but probably fewer that 1% of people know beyond the first.

We don't do pledges of allegiance here (I always find that making kids do that a bit weird and insecure myself).
 
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The whole pledge of allegiance thing was always odd for me. They force everyone in school to stand up and say it each morning before class, and it just had a sort of 'seig heil' vibe to it, but just with a different gesture. That and the whole use of 'under god' violating the separation of church and state rendering the whole thing unconstitutional but unenforced. The original pledge had the phrase 'indivisible' instead of 'under god', the latter of which was added in 1958, as part of the whole 'anti communist' McCarthy era thing.

Being well-versed in history and being the stubborn, anti-conformist that I am, made for some very awkward trips to the principal in my childhood.
 
nickdalzell said:
Being well-versed in history and being the stubborn, anti-conformist that I am, made for some very awkward trips to the principal in my childhood.
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You sound like a friend of mine who sometimes said "under the gods" during the pledge. Not because he was part of a religion with multiple gods, just because he could. Later in life: Because he didn't use the same tools at work that the others did, some co-workers of his tried to give him a hard time about it. They asked him "Do you think you're better than us?".

Anyway: I suppose that's what phone snobbery boils down to, conformity. There's something to be said for conformity, but it can be a vice. When you're saying "Do you think you're better than us?" because someone uses an iPhone or something, that's a vice!
 
I have the opposite reaction whenever someone at work or a customer sees me using vintage tools over modern, battery powered Chinesium power tools.

"You're using metal drills? Ya gonna get electrocuted!" (don't know how this myth keeps getting brought up)

"Why dont ya get with the times, man! "

"1958 called. They want their drills back!"

Call me crazy but since these 50 plus year old tools still WORK and will continue to since they can be taken apart and fixed, while your modern garbage ends up in the, well...garbage, but I'm gonna stick to something that I can count on to keep working! I believe firmly that it's far more green to keep things OUT of the landfull or e-waste center than constantly mining resources that are finite for more and more things we don't need and do the same things but in a more frustrating and complicated manner.

The comments I get about the vacuum tube AM/FM radio I put the classic Rock station on at work are even worse. Some border on impressed it actually works, or that I know what the numbers of the tubes even are, but many are futurists who think everything old is evil and anyone who prefers vintage over modern is a pariah and deserves exile or something.

Occasionally there's an ad on the radio station on that old tube radio that mentions 'listen to Power Rock! (tm) on your smart speaker, google home, or smartphone!'

Why not just use a freaking radio? doesn't need internet, or data gathering! Why not heck, use the FM radio app on your phone too? Why use stupid internet speakers that do the same thing and only cut out due to limited bandwidth?
 
nickdalzell said:
The whole pledge of allegiance thing was always odd for me. They force everyone in school to stand up and say it each morning before class, and it just had a sort of 'seig heil' vibe to it, but just with a different gesture. That and the whole use of 'under god' violating the separation of church and state rendering the whole thing unconstitutional but unenforced. The original pledge had the phrase 'indivisible' instead of 'under god', the latter of which was added in 1958, as part of the whole 'anti communist' McCarthy era thing.

Being well-versed in history and being the stubborn, anti-conformist that I am, made for some very awkward trips to the principal in my childhood.
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I remember doing it every morning.
I also remember what things were like then as opposed to how they are now.

Now, my family has no pride of nation - much like the people that are running our nation into the ground.

My father wants to bitch about the prices of everything, and I get to give a fitting remark such as, "You voted for that, I didn't. You were told before that this would happen, yet you went right ahead and did it anyway."
 
I'm trying to live more like 'then' than 'now'. I worry about the future being more and more like the Covid-19:The Great Reset book laid out. Digital IDs, vaccine passports, (two of which are becoming reality now), separating nature from our cities and never being allowed to live outside a specific city area (the limited range of any electric car guarantees we will no longer be driving 500 plus mile vacations, and them being connected to the internet means our driving is monitored all the time)

I want none of that. If anything I want to live in Mayberry more. As I watch reruns of the Andy Griffith Show, I am inspired to make my home more like the interior of Andy's home, and my life more like his life and Opie's. I grew up that way as a kid with my great grandfather and want to stay there. The future is too dystopian and Black Mirror for me. People aren't allowed to question anything the government says, aren't allowed to dissent, companies no longer care about customer satisfaction, Kmart is dead, small businesses are dying, people are buried into their phone screens everywhere like zombies, and it's going to get worse.

I can only hope I'm dead before society tries to turn me into some kind of transhumanist automaton where even death isn't even an escape.
 
nickdalzell said:
I have the opposite reaction whenever someone at work or a customer sees me using vintage tools over modern, battery powered Chinesium power tools.
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I appreciate a good manual drill, and have a couple of them. But I also want a powered hammer drill when I'm working with masonry (mine is more than 20 years old), and there are jobs for which a decent cordless is useful (including in tight spaces, since the body of my cordless drill is significantly shorter than any of the other 3). So as with all things I like to have a range of tools and use the one that's most appropriate for the job.
nickdalzell said:
The comments I get about the vacuum tube AM/FM radio I put the classic Rock station on at work are even worse. Some border on impressed it actually works, or that I know what the numbers of the tubes even are, but many are futurists who think everything old is evil and anyone who prefers vintage over modern is a pariah and deserves exile or something.
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You've beat me there: I think one of my brothers may have the old valve-based cabinet radio that was a relic even when we were kids, but I've nothing that uses thermionic valves.

In fact I think almost all of my radios are digital: not internet-based, but digital audio broadcasting is a thing here (though FM still exists, unlike TV broadcasts which have been digital-only for decades now). As long as you have a signal there's no downside except that time pips are a couple of seconds late (because there is a lag due to the extra processing and buffering); like all things digital, if the signal is too weak it degrades less gracefully, but it will also operate cleanly in conditions where analogue would be degraded, so it's swings and roundabouts in that respect. And I can use the main one as a bluetooth speaker from my phone, which is useful. So overall this works better for me than the analogue radios did.

None of my HiFi gear is less than 30 years old though (which is also where I have an analogue radio receiver). But I'm not trendy enough to use vinyl records... ;)
nickdalzell said:
Occasionally there's an ad on the radio station on that old tube radio that mentions 'listen to Power Rock! (tm) on your smart speaker, google home, or smartphone!'

Why not just use a freaking radio? doesn't need internet, or data gathering! Why not heck, use the FM radio app on your phone too? Why use stupid internet speakers that do the same thing and only cut out due to limited bandwidth?
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Most phones don't have FM radio capabilities any more I'm afraid.

I actually do have a smart speaker in a second property, but that's because the radio reception there is too weak to be usable (whereas there is no problem with internet bandwidth). But it's run on a separate dummy account in a fake name that's connected to absolutely nothing else, and used for nothing other than playing the radio, so nobody is going to learn anything useful from any data they collect.
 
I think all modern Motorola smartphones (well, the G Stylus I had once did) had an FM radio app, so does Sony phones. I don't know about Nokia. The real issue is nobody uses wired headphones anymore and that is often required to open said app since it uses the wire as an antenna.

The funny thing is nobody with their newer radios (whether the ones we install to golf cars or the FM scan/seek radio that's built into their speakers) can even pull up 93.9 FM which is Power Rock KTG (classic 60s-90s rock). The only one that can in that rural area is the GE tube radio. That radio did require an alignment and trimming, but it's working with just a clip lead for an antenna. What impresses me more is that the tiny little speaker fills the entire pole barn with sound even with the volume only 1/2 way up. Amazing what old tech could do. It's a super heterodyne which means it has more than the standard two IF stages and allows for more sensitivity if adjusted correctly. Your standard $19 Walmart pocket radio won't accomplish that in the same area.
 
Windroid said:
I normally disapprove of such language. It's childish, it says more about the speaker than it does about the listener! However, there is a saying: "Turnabout is fair play". If the kid was just being an immature elitist (and that's an if, I don't know the nature of his disdain for green texts), then I can't say I blame you.
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What ever happened to normal? Disapprove of such language? What, people being normal?Normal people saying normal things? Intolerant?
 
Trom said:
What ever happened to normal? Disapprove of such language? What, people being normal?Normal people saying normal things? Intolerant?
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In my social circles, saying "gay" as an insult is not normal. The same goes for using verger sexual terms as insults.
 
My son wants an Iphone and I said no. I told him to get one when he has a job and money. I gave him my Note 10+5G but he says he gets alot of grief from his friends/classmates. I said so what. LOL
 
tube517 said:
My son wants an Iphone and I said no. I told him to get one when he has a job and money. I gave him my Note 10+5G but he says he gets alot of grief from his friends/cla. ssmates. I said so what. LOL
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My wife had a similar situation at work a few years ago. Some one told her android was junk and to get an iphone. Wife currently has a Pixel 5A and a Pixel LTE watch and she's happy.
 
"Well, my iPhone JUST WORKS". (Didn't Apple copyright that phrase?)

Of course it does: with other Apple stuff. I would expect an Apple phone to work with an Apple tablet/laptop, watch, earbuds, TV and speaker. However, my Android phone JUST WORKS with my Windows laptop and desktop; Sony earbuds and TV; Samsung watch; in other words, it JUST WORKS with pretty much anything out there, no matter who makes it, so I'm not locked inside the Walled Garden. They're locked in a technological prison while claiming to be in an exclusive, gated community.
 
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